I've been doing body work on my car for nearly a year now, but I have still never been taught/told about Rust.

From what I've learned by talking to body guys is that:
-rust reacts with steel when you combine water and air.
-Rust needs to be treated ASAP.
-There are different forms of rust, surface rust (first stages of rust), pitted rust (latter stages of rust) and just corroded metal.
-several ways to treat rust is to sand it off, sand blast it, or to por15/encapsulate the mother
-water, greasy fingers, and air can cause regular sheet metal to rust.
-Different forms of rust can/are treated differently.

I'm not saying that this is HOW rust is, this is what i've been told by various body people that know and have worked with cars for many years.

What i am still confused about and what i would like to know straight up is what is the best method to treat rust.

Many a day i've stumbled upon surface rust and pitted rust.
I've been told to sand off surface rust and ignore its existance beyond that, although i do sometimes worry that surface rust can carry on to other places of the car by going BENEATH the metal. Although that wouldn't make sense because its SURFACE rust so you cannot really be beneath anything right?

When does one determine that rust has gone beyond the stage of "surface rust" and into "internal" rusting that must be treated more meticously? I'm assuming that after you sand the rust, if you see pitted areas, that that is your internal rust that must be treated...

Moving on, pitted rust, as i've been taught, can be treated by using a wire brush, flat-head screwdriver, and/or a spot/sand blaster. Using these tools i've cleaned out the pitted areas and gotten them to look relativly gray and i've been told that this is the point in which you want all pitted areas to reach. After this point you apply the primer and everything is good, you shouldn't see rust in that area again.

What i DONT understand is that at times ive found pitted rust in which i cannot throughly clean...meaning there is still rust in some of the small pits of the metal. I have been told that even though there is rust there, i can still prime on top and not worry about it rusting through....
Is there a difference to this? Am i supposed to throughly clean out pitted areas, or can they be primed over without any worries?

I've been told that i need not worry because rust reacts with both oxygen and water together and if any piece of metal is protected from either one element then it will not rust....but my question is...since theres rust ALREADY there, will it continue to rust through? or will the primer seal it and stop it from rusting?


I know this is a mouth-ful but this is something that should be of everyones concern. I would like to know straight up about rust, its effects and its initiators as well as methods of treatment in the proper fasion. yes its a long post, and yes i have many questions but my biggest hope is that this may help lots of people know the deal on rust and what to do with it, because i most certainly do not have the answers and i would definitly like to treat my car in the proper way.

 

I think you are getting too serious about how to treat rust. If you have surface rust, many polishes and other like products are available to treat that. Regarding pitting and more serious metal rust problems, encapsulatiing products such as POR 15 do an adequate job of stopping the damage already done, but will not bring the metal back to it's original condition. There are a lot of paint products available such as Rustoleum who purport to stop the rusting process, but they only slow down the process. The best preventive measure is to get the metal as clean and shiny as possible, then use an encapsulator to seal it before painting it. Face it.....water and air (especially salt water) are killers for steel metal surfaces, and only proper coats of paint on shiny metal will prevent rust.